Mach Industries, a defense technology company founded by 21-year-old Ethan Thornton and backed by Sequoia, has secured a contract with the U.S. Army, according to CEO Thornton, who spoke with TechCrunch. The company is also planning to establish its first factory.

The factory, which will be located in Huntington Beach, California, where Mach’s headquarters is situated, will span 115,000 square feet. Despite the potentially high costs associated with operating in this area, Southern California has emerged as a hub for the burgeoning defense tech industry in the United States, with companies like SpaceX contributing to its growth.

Mach has been selected by the Army Applications Laboratory to develop a precision cruise missile with vertical takeoff capabilities, dubbed “Strategic Strike.” This developmental contract was awarded in the third quarter of 2024. Thornton revealed to TechCrunch that the contract is being announced now because the technology has successfully completed its initial flight tests last month.

The factory is another area where Mach, along with other defense tech companies like Anduril, is innovating. The company’s factory, known as Forge 1, will be one of many decentralized factories that Mach plans to build. Instead of relying on large, centralized facilities, Mach will establish numerous smaller factories to create a more resilient defense industrial base.

These factories will be designed to handle all aspects of production, from raw materials to final assembly. In addition to the Huntington Beach location, Mach plans to establish factories at other sites in the United States and potentially internationally.

The Huntington Beach factory is already producing two of Mach’s primary products: a weapon called Glide and a lightweight, jet-powered vertical takeoff and landing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) called Viper. The Viper is notable for its ability to take off vertically without requiring a runway and is significantly less expensive to produce than traditional UAVs, with Mach claiming it can be built at a cost up to 300 times lower.

“Viper is manufacturable in a decentralized network of factories, which is a significant advantage,” Thornton explained. “Since it doesn’t require specialized tooling, we can ramp up production without relying on centralized locations.”

Glide is a bomb deployed from a balloon-like vehicle positioned at the edge of space, providing it with potentially infinite range and making it more difficult to intercept. Thornton stated that the first factory should eventually be capable of producing 1,000 Vipers and 3,000 Glides per month.

Teen founder, $85M in funding

Mach Industries has garnered significant attention in the defense tech sector, partly due to its status as Sequoia’s first investment in this field and the fact that its founder, Ethan Thornton, was still a teenager when he established the company.

Thornton dropped out of MIT at the age of 19 to focus on Mach and soon secured investors, including Sequoia’s Stephanie Zhan and Shaun Maguire, who led the company’s $5.7 million seed round in June 2023. This was followed by a $79 million Series A round led by Geoff Lewis, founder of Bedrock Capital, in October 2023.

While many founders in the defense tech industry are young, with Palmer Luckey founding Anduril in his mid-20s, Thornton’s journey with Mach began when he was still in high school. He bootstrapped the company by running a wood and metal workshop and later dropped out of MIT before securing capital or building a team.

“The highest risk I took was dropping out of MIT before we had any funding or a team,” Thornton recalled. Despite these challenges, Mach has become a prominent figure in the defense tech landscape, with the company now employing dozens of people and working with notable figures such as Peterson Conway, a former recruiter for Palantir.

Mach’s rapid growth and innovative approach have positioned it as one of the leading companies in the defense tech sector, with a promising future ahead.